The Last Winter

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All Rise...

Judge Adam Arseneau always keeps warm. He has a fire burning in his pants. Luckily, he has antibiotics now

The Charge

What if mankind only had one season left on Earth?

Opening Statement

A chilly psychological thriller, The Last Winter combines some
unlikely bedfellows into a smart and foreboding film. Remote Alaskan oil
drilling, Ron Perlman, environmental sustainability, and lots of dead
people—sounds like good times to me!

Facts of the Case

After a failed early drilling operation, the American oil company North
Corporation has finally received congressional approval to resume drilling in
the frigid north of Alaska in the Northern Arctic National Wildlife Refuge,
forever altering the pristine landscape. Details of the previous ill-fated
expedition have been closely guarded by North, but the new team seems undaunted,
anxious to help solve the emerging energy crisis in America.

Team leader Ed Pollack (Ron Perlman, Hellboy) and his men are stymied early by an
unnaturally warm spell of weather, which has begun to melt the permafrost. This
makes construction of the ice roads impossible; roads which are necessary to
transport the drilling equipment up north and begin work. Without anything to
drill, the team is stressed, edgy, and bored—a dangerous combination in
the endless white tundra.

The greenhorn member of the team, Maxwell (Zach Gilford, Friday Night
Lights), has a hard time adjusting to the isolation. After he goes missing
out in the snow, he begins to act strange, spending his time staring out into
the endless snow, mumbling about "not being alone." The resident
independent environmentalist James Hoffman (James LeGros, Vantage Point), on-site to ensure North
behaves itself, environmentally-speaking, is especially alarmed by Maxwell's
behavior, himself having noticed some particularly odd things. The temperature
is unusually high for the middle of winter and shows no signs of abating. He
begins to challenge Pollock and the mission, but is angrily dismissed as being
paranoid.

The next day, James seems less paranoid after Maxwell is found dead in the
middle of the snow, miles from the camp, with a camcorder in his hand. When the
team watches the video, things take a turn.

The Evidence

Though they bear nothing in common beyond an obvious thematic link, The
Last Winter is in many ways the movie that The Happening wanted to be but had no
idea how to. Here is a horror film that takes place in Alaska, in the middle of
the Arctic Circle, surrounded by raw, unadulterated nature, sealed in by
never-ending quantities of ice, snow, and tundra. The protagonist is an unknown
force that assaults a small team of miners tasked with tapping the landscape for
oil, and, as you can imagine, things go rather badly for them.

The Last Winter is scary not because of any particular amounts of
blood or gore (there are none) but in the sheer psychological isolation of the
environment. The landscape is the scariest monster in The Last Winter,
with endlessly blinding white sea, blistering cold, and howling winds driving
its characters to strange and unusual behavior. The film deftly avoids the
horror genre clichés of having, like, one guy murder everyone with an axe
(boring!) and goes in an entirely different direction, which ties back into the
previous comparison to The Happening. There is a horrific creature in
this film, but it probably isn't what you expect—but if you've seen the
aforementioned film, you will have a pretty good idea what is coming around the
corner.

Of course, I won't tell you what it is. Not openly, at least. That would be
spoiling the fun! The Last Winter is a subtle piece of filmmaking, one
that prizes terse, Mamet-esque dialogue, long shots, and silence; the
razor-sharp anthesis of most modern-day thrillers. No chainsaws, no screaming
nubile and naked females (aww), no sadistic taskmaster torturing victims, none
of that stuff. The film does get scary, but only in the classical sense of the
word; more like dreadful, in that it inspires dread in audiences. The complete
isolation and the minimalism of the film have surprising momentum, especially
considering the film's plot…which at face value is quite preposterous.
Credit where credit is due: horror actor/director/writer Larry Fessenden (Wendigo) sells a totally ludicrous story on
audiences through nothing short of complete command of mood and atmosphere.

It is at times a tough sell. The special effects are not quite up to par
with where producers no doubt wished they could be. Ambitious trickery to be
sure; there are some very daring and complex CGI shots, but without the
financial backbone to prop them up, they look laughable and awkward, like an NYU
film thesis project. The ending is an ending in the strictest sense of the film
(it ends) but it lacks any sort of satisfying climax for the protagonists. We
spend much time getting to know tiny, subtle nuances of a generally
one-dimensional cast, only to suddenly have them violently removed from the film
(for one reason or another; no spoilers here). The third act is the shakiest of
The Last Winter, squandering its precariously balanced psychological
tension on formulaic horror clichés, unreliable coincidences, and a
seemingly never-ending sequence of unlucky events for the hapless drillers.

Still, there is a quality to the film that overshadows its obvious flaws.
The Last Winter has great atmosphere, tension, and a foreboding that
feels fresh and original and worth praising. We might lose a proverbial wheel or
two along the way to the dénouement, sure, but The Last Winter
coasts across the finish line all the same. The cast is strong, with Ron Perlman
and James LeGros hammering out solid performances as conflicting corners of a
romantic triangle. Shot in Reykjavik, Iceland, and Alaska, Last Winter
has locations that are stunning in their monochromatic beauty. This one will not
win much favor with the majority of horror-seeking audiences, but The Last
Winter is too stylish, too atmospheric, and too well-crafted in its
apocalyptic vision to be dismissed.

Presented in an anamorphic widescreen transfer, the cinematography features
wonderfully over-saturated compositions of gleaming snow and sunlight, as if the
characters are walking about in angelic, pure whiteness. The blaring contrast
leads to a fairly muted, dull color palate, with browns and blacks being the
most prominent. Black levels are okay, but the film does show some grain. For
audio, we get a respectable 5.1 surround track, with a nicely atmospheric
string-driven score. Most of the dialogue is firmly rooted in the center
channel, and rear environmental placement could be stronger.

Extras are small in number, but high in value. We get a commentary track
with co-writer/director Larry Fessenden, who goes into nice intricate detail
about every aspect of his beloved project. It's a bit on the dull side as
commentary tracks go, but very meticulous. The only other feature is a making-of
documentary featuring deleted scenes and interviews with cast and crew. A
standard feature, except that this one is feature-length! Scratch that; it is
better than feature-length. The Last Winter has a running time of 101
minutes, but the making-of featurette goes on for almost 120. There is an irony
there to be sure, but you can't knock it from a supplemental standpoint. This is
definitely fantastic value for a single-disc presentation.

The Rebuttal Witnesses

With films like The Last Winter and The Happening we may be seeing a new
trend in thrillers, and it is a strange and unfamiliar area for cinemagoers. The
film assigns horrific and dreadful elements to the environment, which until very
recently has never had such elements associated to it. As a result, what should
pass for scary comes off as anything but. Perhaps we lack the cinematic language
to associate terror with these new elements. A guy with a chainsaw, a zombie,
and even chest-rendering aliens—these are scary because we know what to
expect from the movies that feature them. The environment…well, it seems
less scary somehow. Ask poor M. Night about this—he probably knows all
about it.

Closing Statement

It is interesting to see the fury of nature make more of an impact in the
horror world, and The Last Winter gives ol' Mother Earth an ominous,
eerie, and foreboding twist. This is a film thick with atmosphere and
psychological dread, and even if nature isn't your thing, anyone searching for a
thriller that targets your brain will find satisfaction with The Last
Winter.